Maqluba

Fried aubergine is laid at the bottom of the pot, then lamb or chicken, then rice on top. Once the water has gone and the rice is done, the pot is turned over onto a tray. The dish comes out standing as a mould. That is where the name comes from: maqluba means upside down.

What goes at the bottom

Aubergine is the most common but not the only choice; cauliflower, potato and green beans do the same work. All of them are fried first. A vegetable put in without frying takes water from the rice and the mould does not hold. Toasted almonds and pine nuts are scattered over the top, with yoghurt and a tomato and cucumber salad beside it.

The story of the name

There is an account on record. The dish was first called badhinjaniyya, the aubergine one, and the name changed when Saladin, eating it in Jerusalem, called it that upside-down food. This is passed on as legend rather than as document. What is documented is something else: recipes under the same name sit in the cookbook of al-Baghdadi in the 13th century and in that of Ibn al-Warraq in the 10th.

Where it stands on a Syrian table

The sources give the origin to Palestine. Being common in Syria does not make it a Syrian dish, and this page does not write it as one. It is, though, one of the weekly dishes of a Damascus household, and the same pot goes on in Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

What separates it from mahshi is that the vegetable is not stuffed but fried and layered. Shakriyeh and mansaf sit on the yoghurt side; maqluba belongs to the dry rice line. And unlike sayadieh it carries meat rather than fish, plus that flip of the pot.

Where to eat it

It is not a dish a restaurant has every day. Ask for it at lunch in places that cook home food and put out a dish of the day. The pot is large, so single portions are rare. This is food for a full table. At home the flip is watched: the tray goes over the pot, the pot is turned, and everyone looks to see whether the mould held.